Snoooooooooooo

[sholio]

I'm glad I got my outside chores done over the last week, because I woke this morning to find the ground and trees covered with snow. There's not a lot of snow -- maybe an inch. Fairbanks is a desert, of sorts, and we never get a lot of snow at one time. It just never goes away.

Seems ungracious to complain about it when it's starting so much later than usual this year, though.

I'm fairly sure that I never actually realized what winters in a temperate climate were like until living in Illinois for a few years in the early '00s. Intellectually, I had always known that subarctic/arctic winters were harsher than the temperate sort, but I suppose I had always imagined them to be shorter versions of the winters I was familiar with ... like, maybe it doesn't snow 'til early November and then it melts in March or something like that. The whole concept of a winter where snow falls AND THEN IT MELTS AGAIN and you go back to having what feels to me like fall (thirty degrees and bare brown trees with maybe patchy snow in the shadows) was a real eye-opener. I always used to look at pictures of medieval clothing and think, "But how do you SURVIVE in the winter?" ... and yes, I know that winters during the Middle Ages were colder and longer than they are now, but still -- I always heard "winter" and thought "four feet of snow on the ground for six months". Which is actually quite unusual in most places.

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Comments

[liz-mo.livejournal.com]

Hehe. Yes, exactly :)

Get safe through winter!

[sholio]

I think I'm ready for it, and it was absolutely lovely when I walked the dogs this morning! Although now the roads are going to suck for a while ... bleh.

[leesa_perrie]

Four feet of snow for six months? Most people in the UK can't cope with a few inches of snow on the ground for a few days, let alone one. Whole. Week!!! :D

[sholio]

*grin* I do think it's a matter of what you're used to. Like I commented over on DW, the worst part of winter is always right after the first snowfall when the roads are made of suck and everyone is re-learning how to drive in it, and you guys get that EVERY TIME IT SNOWS, so you have my condolences. *g*

[trobadora]

My impression is that a frigheningly large number of people forgets how to drive at the mere sight of a snowflake, regardless of actual road conditions. *g*

[trobadora]

Heh. A few years back we actually had a winter where the snow didn't melt for about three months, and that was practically unheard of. (It was also rather unpleasant, as the snow - obviously - just kept getting dirtier and dirtier.)

[sholio]

Yeah, the longer the snow sticks around the less picturesque it gets ... and when it melts in the spring, things just get nasty. When I was a kid we had a German neighbor who hated Alaskan springs because she'd grown up somewhere that spring was bright and green and full of flowers, and our springs are more brown and squishy and full of trash ...

[trobadora]

Yeah, we really do tend to forget that seasons are different elsewhere, don't we? In my head "spring" and "green and flowery" are sort of hardwired together.

[jimandblair.livejournal.com]

A good friend lives on the equator and I remember telling her that the dark nights were drawing in and I completely threw her. She didn't know what I was talking about. We had a fun conversation with me explaining changes in latitude and light.

Your everyday tales illustrate an interesting and fascinating place. Winter as a four month constant with fluctuating dark with the edge of light at noon is a fascinating concept. I adore the midnight sun, but I think that I would struggle with the winter dark.

[sholio]

Oh wow, I hadn't even thought about that! Yeah, if you lived in an equatorial place, that's something you wouldn't even know about, except in a sort of vague "yeah, I read about that once" kind of way.

I actually like the changing daylight and changing seasons, though I wouldn't say I enjoy the winter darkness so much as it makes me appreciate summer a whole lot more! I wouldn't want to have the midnight sun all year 'round.

[kodiak-bear.livejournal.com]

LOL that so cracks me up because it's one of the things that I learned to like about Nebraska. You get snow, get to enjoy it and have fun and then...it MELTS! Awesome, no 4-6 months of snow and ice. Of course the Air Force has kept us most of the time in the south so we rarely get snow anymore but I still remember the long winters growing up. By the time break up arrives, you are so ready to see the *ground* again.

[sholio]

Hee! It was nice - winter in Illinois felt a lot like autumn in Alaska to me, with just enough snow that you got to have some nice winter fun (and got a reminder of everything that you weren't missing in the summer) and then it WENT AWAY.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I've lived enough places that I can probably say I've experienced all types of weather (except hurricanes. Although Kansas can get hurricane type winds). Sporadic winters, wet and icky winters, winters and snow that just won't go away!, winter where snow is an urban legend but patches of ice will close entire cities... It's a real eye opener not just in how diverse weather is but how people react to it depending on where you live.

[sholio]

That's really cool to have lived in such diverse places. :D I've only ever lived in two places, really: Alaska and the Midwest. Aside from visiting family in other states, I've never really spent much time there, certainly not enough to have experienced the turning of the seasons.

[wildcat88.livejournal.com]

Snow? It was 90 here yesterday. (We got a cool front today. Not even going to hit 70. And there was much rejoicing in the land.)

[sholio]

Yeah, my dad's in Oklahoma and he said recently that they've been having unseasonable heat as well. Ouch.

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

Except for the Antarctic wind that rolls straight up Collins St! It's a lot milder than there, in fact I've never seen real snow :)